Translated material
Without a strategy and at the limit of resources
NATO discusses Afghanistan and Russia's future policy
Tomorrow the 44th International Munich Security Conference will begin with a gala dinner at the Bavarian Dvor Hotel. Its current slogan is formulated in an extraordinary way: “A world in chaos - altered balances of power, lack of strategies?” The main speaker at the dinner, as Vremya Novostei learned from the conference organizers, will be Boris Tadich. The newly elected President of Serbia will outline his vision of the problem of the Kosovo region. The head of the conference organizing committee, German diplomat Horst Teltschik, confirmed that he has confirmations in this regard from Belgrade.Four dozen presidents and ministers will be guests of the capital of Bavaria. In total, over 250 representatives of the political elite from 50 countries will gather here. From Germany there will be the Vice-Chancellor, the head of the German Foreign Ministry Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the chief of the Ministry of Defense Franz Josef Jung. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will come from Turkey, and Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura will come from Japan. Among the guests is IAEA Director Muhammad ElBaradei. Yesterday the only thing unclear was the personal composition of the US delegation, but no one doubted the arrival of Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Russia will be represented by First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov. On Sunday, the second day of the forum, he is scheduled to speak in a discussion on the topic “Where is Russia going?” Many people remember last year’s extremely emotional speech by President Vladimir Putin in Munich. In the now famous “Munich speech”, he harshly criticized the US desire to establish a unipolar world.
Sergei Ivanov is unlikely to be able to repeat the same sharp presentation of the Kremlin's views. But it will set the tone for debate about Russia's policies in the near future. And these disputes, judging by the statements of the conference organizers, are inevitable. “We will try to find answers to the questions of how seriously Russia’s interests are taken into account and whether it is perceived as an equal partner. Or are we building our foreign policy without taking into account its interests? - said Horst Teltschik. “The focus will also be on the question of whether Russia should be involved in pan-European structures of security and preservation of peace.”
The most important part of the meeting will be a discussion on NATO. This item on the agenda will apparently cause the most heated battles, capable, like Vladimir Putin’s speech last year, of disrupting the smooth flow of the meeting. Security problems in Afghanistan will inevitably become a stumbling block.
In Germany, in recent days there has been an ongoing debate around expanding the participation of the Bundeswehr in the International Stabilization Force in Afghanistan (ISAF). Last week, Gates asked his German counterpart Jung to send part of the Afghan Bundeswehr contingent, amounting to 3,240 soldiers, to the southern regions of Afghanistan, where military operations are actively taking place. And he, citing the immutability of the mandate of the Bundestag regulating participation in ISAF, responded with a polite but firm refusal. But demands for greater solidarity within NATO have grown louder in Germany this week. After all, we are talking about the unity of this organization.
Robert Gates in Munich will once again try to persuade Germany to reconsider its position. He will arrive here tomorrow from Vilnius after an informal meeting with NATO colleagues. In Lithuania, he said yesterday that the 26-nation alliance had “divided into two parts”: one was “ready to fight and die for the freedom of peoples”, the other was not. Stunned by Gates’s pressure, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer objected: “The Alliance is united. All allies are ready to fulfill their international duty in Afghanistan.”
But the NATO Secretary General did not reassure the head of the Pentagon with this. “The United States is close to exhausting its resources in Afghanistan,” they said in NATO circles in Brussels. It is alleged that the 43,000-strong ISAF lacks at least 7,500 soldiers. This is significantly more than the losses suffered: in total, over 700 ISAF troops were killed, of which more than 700 were Americans, 26 were Germans.
Berlin, seeking to reassure Washington, announced on the eve of the Munich conference plans to send a Bundeswehr unit to the north of Afghanistan this summer to replace the Norwegians, which will lead a “quick reaction group.” But for the Americans, 250 elite fighters, and even those sent not to the south, but to the north of Afghanistan, are, as they say in Bavaria, “a drop on a hot stone.” The Pentagon is convinced that the Germans can and should double the size of their forces in Afghanistan, bringing them to 6.5 thousand bayonets.